RHOBH: This Episode Wasn’t Terribly Quotable

When you consider the explosive party that capped last week’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, last night’s episode was downright tame. Carlton threw a party without a single naked person at it, Kyle and Brandi went on a hike together because now they’re united by a common enemy and Cedric may be on the run from Lisa’s goons in a remote part of France. That last part is purely conjecture, though, but doesn’t it sound like the truth? Wouldn’t the world be better if it were the truth?

1. Yolanda’s kids are embarrassed by their dad’s house. Because it’s too big. Their dad is so rich it’s embarrassing. It’s literally an embarrassment of riches. Yolanda’s ex-husband is where that saying comes from.

2. Is Lisa trying to freeze out Yolanda? I don’t know, but maybe. Lisa is good at the game of being a Real Housewife, more than anything, and Yolanda is a competitor for fan favorite at this point. Did she have a birthday party for Ken on a day she knew Yolanda couldn’t come on purpose? I don’t know, but maybe. (I don’t know lots of things, but I have suspicions about almost all of them.)

3. And now for something completely different, let’s watch Kyle and her husband play basketball. Finding new ways to provide exposition about off-camera antics in this show is hard; we can only watch people sit down to have tea or juice together to tell us (by telling each other) what has happened between this episode and the last one so many times before the show is just one long coffee break. So for this episode, they added Yolanda’s ex-husband’s youthful fiance to the mix to make Yolanda’s exposition more interesting, and then they…shoved Kyle and Mauricio outside, threw a basketball at their heads and told them to start talking. And playing basketball. Just, you know, casually. As one does.

4. Joyce has arbitrarily crowned someone Queen of the Universe. Just your periodic reminder that Joyce has claimed that power for herself and now uses it at will.

5. Carlton’s upset she was called anti-Semitic because it could hurt her husband’s business relationship with Jewish clients. I don’t think Carlton is actually virulently anti-Jewish, and I don’t think Kyle was calling her that for any reason other than to improve her own position in their argument, but mentioning that you’re upset because it could alienate her husband’s Jewish clients is probably not the best defense. Carlton welled up a little when recounting how she was harassed as a child in South Africa for having black friends, but she welled up a LOT when she thought about the cash tap running dry.

6. Brandi’s tongue is swollen. That’s what happens to people like Brandi in, like, Greek mythology. It’s too good. Brandi can’t stop running her mouth, so the universe is trying to help her.

7. No one entirely likes Lisa. They have some fair points: Lisa doesn’t spend much time with the rest of the cast, she doesn’t seem to care for their silly little life milestones, she inserts herself into drama in a way that allows her to stir the pot but still look like she’s above it all. On the other hand, Lisa is by far the most famous of the group and generally the most well-liked, and she’s had more outside opportunities as a result of her Housewifery than the rest of them have had. Lisa’s really good at being a Housewife, and I’m sure that bothers the rest of the cast.

8. Lisa was being shot for a magazine while Kyle and Brandi were sitting on a rock complaining about her. As I’ve said before, you can often tell how Bravo feels about the people involved in any particular conflict by how things end up edited together. The juxtaposition of Lisa getting her hair and nails done by a glam squad while Kyle and Brandi were literally huddled together on a rock, sharing Lisa conspiracy theories. All that was missing was a pair of very jaunty tinfoil hats.

9. Lisa forced Cedric into exile in France, apparently. Wait, wait, wait. Can we get some more details on this? Do Lisa’s discarded sidekicks get deported? Where are they going to send Brandi?